28. Senator Butz Aquino

Senator Butz Aquino, brother of Ninoy and uncle of the President, died yesterday. Seeing his face on the headlines somehow triggers a load of memories from childhood. The marches on Mendiola Bridge -- Senator Butz led the way with the August Twenty One Movement (ATOM); they were not that many to begin with. Once I monitored the ATOM run which covered many kilometers from Tarlac and ended in the tarmac where Ninoy was shot, and there were barely ten of them there. But Senator Butz, he marched on until that fateful early morning of February 22 when he gathered the people in EDSA that eventually ended in the departure of the Marcoses. I voted for him in his senatorial campaign, especially because he had this hip jingle sang by Freddie Aguilar that connected with the young voters then. Senator Butz is dead now; and the world is left poorer, because it lost the pair of eyes, which were among the first to see that a dictatorship could crumble with marches and runs alone. Rest in peace dear senator, you are not just the brother of Ninoy, you have been your own man all along.